I normally do not write political pieces out of fear that some Homeland security agent will decide I’m a threat to the country and make me disappear somewhere no one will ever find me again. In light of the current climate, however, I feel compelled to write about my experience of being an American Muslim female of Pakistani descent in a society that has branded everyone like me as a terrorist.

As an American, I am sad to say I am living through the kind of historic times I never thought I would have to live through. I have always been so proud of my country – the one that polices and guides the whole world, the one that has become the face of democracy, equality and freedom. I have always been so very secure in the knowledge that no matter what the rest of the world was like, I could always rely on my country to be the light in the dark, the world’s knight in shining armor, the army that stands between good and evil.

My pride and faith in this country have been shattered. My belief that America stood for ALL Americans is gone. My belief that the government is here to protect, serve and create order is gone. My hope that the children of tomorrow would grow up as free as possible of racial and religious prejudice has totally evaporated. This is definitely due to the fact that so many acts of terrorism have happened all around the world and have been performed by Islamic terrorists. But it is also because Western countries supplied that hate and the weapons to those terrorists in the first place.

Has anyone ever noticed how there is always more money for building weapons and walls and starting wars but never enough funding for medical care and educating the masses so that they actually understand the world better and can rise up against crooked politicians?

I have been on a roll with trying new things in the past few months. I have also touched base with the things I once loved to do and hadn’t done since my teens or childhood. But now, I am thinking of doing things that aren’t always shiny rainbows and happy unicorns. I am considering joining peaceful protests on the streets – the kind of thing I have never done. I am thinking about writing to my local representatives, senators, governor – all because I am enraged and terrified by the actions of the worst president the United States has ever known. I don’t care if you don’t share my opinion. This is going to continue to be my opinion as long as this man remains president of a country that wholeheartedly finds him absolutely repulsive in every way possible.

I am so very tired of people telling me it is going to be okay. I am tired of people telling me I don’t need to be afraid. I am tired of ‘alternative facts’ and men deciding what women can do with their bodies. I am tired of being profiled and degraded for my religion and the color of my skin. I am tired of being vilified by people who have never even known someone like me. I am tired of people who have never left their small town and seen anything beyond a few hundred miles of our country trying to control the millions of very different lives everyone across the world leads on the basis of their limited experience and willful ignorance.

I am tired of being treated like a third class citizen because I wasn’t born with the ‘right’ skin color and the ‘right’ religion.

I am especially tired of being told to go back where I came from. How about all of you go back to Europe or Russia, too?

I am tired of domestic terrorism not being labelled as such – unless of course a Muslim person was involved.

A brand new mosque and a brand new, unopened Islamic center were burned down near me recently. To the ground. They took hundreds of thousand of dollars to build and years to make. But they were callously destroyed. Imagine if that happened to a church or synagogue – the world would be in an uproar about it. But mosques? No one cares. It’s not terrorism or a hate crime at all.

The western media doesn’t care about the ethnic cleansing of Burmese Muslims. Or the masses being wiped out in Arabic countries. Or the hundred of instances of terrorism committed against people in Muslim countries like Pakistan and Turkey by those same terrorists. No one in the Western world lifts a single finger against any of it. Nor do they acknowledge that their wars and greed for oil have incited much of these repercussions they now face or that Most of the people killed by terrorist attacks have been Muslims.

Do people think that Muslims just woke up one day and decided to be terrorists? Does no one ever wonder WHY they decided to kill themselves to incite terror and fear in others? Some of them are probably brainwashed and believe they are doing it in the way of God – they aren’t. Islam forbids this kind of evil. Most of them do these things either for the safety of their loved ones or out of hate for the people that never accepted them, always turned them away, looked down on them and treated them as lesser being because they were ‘savages’ – even though the western nations were the ones that invaded and made colonies everywhere. subjecting people to their whims and culminating in a massive slave trade as well as laying down the foundations for terrorist organizations, the effects of which we all continue to suffer from today.

Did slavery exist before all this? Most certainly. But was it so widely accepted and was it done on such a major scale? I don’t believe so. People still think they are so much better than others based on their skin tone. Why this is so, I don’t understand. We are all flesh and blood. We are all human beings who experience the same emotions and needs. Why anyone thinks they are superior to anyone else because of their skin tone is beyond me. Why anyone thinks their religion is superior to anyone else’s is beyond me too.

I still remember the Crusades and the Holocaust. Did the rest of the world forget?

Conquest and subjection of the losing populace are a repetition in human history that will never end. However, we no longer live in an age where you can make mountains of skulls and burn grand libraries to the ground and not have people rise up against you.

To those who think your race is what makes you superior, to those that think your faith is better than everyone else’s, to those that think your way of life is better than the rest of the world’s – NEWS FLASH: IT IS NOT. YOU ARE NO BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE. YOU ARE JUST AS SIGNIFICANT AND INSIGNICANT AS A BLADE OF GRASS IN A GIANT MEADOW.

To those that want to turn America in to the present day Nazi Germany, good luck. You will not win this war.

Forgive me for the rant, but I felt I would explode if I didn’t put my thoughts into words. In conclusion, the poem I wrote below explains my feelings most clearly:

American born
American raised
Proud not to be
Anti-any-race

Muslims banned
Mosques hazed
On what constitution
Is this based?

America – land of the free
Home of the brave
Why has fear
Become your face?

Good old days of
War, injustice, inequality
Will never return
For the crazed

This is democracy
This is freedom of speech
This is my country
Where my loyalty is based

I will not be silenced
I will not be controlled
I will rise above
The hatred in your soul